How Mercedes-Maybach Came Back From the Dead
Sjoerd van der Wal
Back in early October 1997, there weren’t that many people who had heard of Maybach — and most of those who had heard of the brand likely hadn’t thought about it much. The nameplate founded by Wilhelm Maybach that had first graced a car in 1909 had lain dormant for decades; after a spell in the pre-war era building luxurious motorcars and a World War II spent building engines for Panzers and Tigers, the company was bought up by Mercedes parent Daimler-Benz in 1960 and soon faded into history.
Smash cut to 2024, however, and the Maybach-aware likely number in the hundreds of millions. A 2019 study by Car and Driver found it had been mentioned in popular songs more than Rolls-Royce and Ford combined over the last four decades. The brand’s cars have come to signify wealth and status across the cultural gamut, showing up in everything from Curtis Jackson’s Power to HBO’s Succession.
Clearly, the Maybach badge has experienced a resurgence for the ages — and it all started in the fall of 1997. This is how the Maybach brand went from faded to famous over the course of less than 30 years.
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1997: A Concept Debuts
Image Credit: Mercedes-Maybach The 1997 Tokyo Motor Show saw the debut of the concepts that previewed the retro BMW Z8 and gave us our first look at Volkswagen’s now-legendary W12, but it also marked the return of the Maybach badge to a new vehicle for the first time in decades. Clad in shades of maroon and brown and boasting a four-eyed, almost alien face, the Maybach concept was based on the chassis of the S-Class of its time, but wore styling penned by Mercedes-Benz’s Japanese design studio and and had unique luxury features like a reclining rear seat and a dashboard-mounted laptop.
It wouldn’t stay a concept for long; with Mercedes-Benz’s fellow Germans Volkswagen and BMW scrapping over the rights to Bentley and Rolls-Royce in 1998, the time was prime for Mercedes to throw a line into the super-luxury pond.
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2002: The First Production Models, the 57 and 62, Arrive
Image Credit: Getty Images DaimlerChrysler, as Maybach’s parent company was known at the time, pulled out all the stops to bring back the brand’s return to the streets. In June 2002, the automaker shipped one of the first cars from England to the United States in a clear box atop the Queen Elizabeth 2, with the ship greeted in New York harbor by fireboats spraying water before a helicopter scooped the Maybach off the ship and lowered it to land so it could drive to Wall Street.
It was perhaps the grandest entrance any new car ever made into America, but the production Maybach certainly warranted a splashy arrival. It arrived in two versions, the long Maybach 57 and even longer Maybach 62 — the numbers representing the cars’ lengths in 10ths of a meter — each powered by a velvet-smooth twin-turbo V-12 and laden with pretty much every luxury feature Mercedes-Benz could throw at it, from massaging seats to a Bose stereo with six-disc CD changer. Opt for the 62, and buyers could even spec a partition between the front and rear rows, just like a prom limo.
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2005: One-Off Exelero Polishes Maybach’s Star
Those first Maybachs of the 21st Century were anything but understated, but even they looked tame in comparison to the next vehicle to wear the badge: the Maybach Exelero. Technically a one-off concept car built by DaimlerChrysler and a boutique Italian auto shop specializing in limited-run vehicles, the Exelero took the chassis of the Maybach 57 and built a super-coupe that looked tailor-made for Darth Vader. Its engine was pumped up to 690 horsepower, and not just for show; as part of the car’s mission brief, the German subsidiary of Goodyear had requested the nearly-three-ton Exelero be capable of hitting more than 217 mph, so they could test the limits of their high-performance tires. Sadly, only the one was ever built, but its outrageous appearance and top speed made it an instant icon; rumors flew that rapper Birdman had purchased the car, and while those proved untrue, it did show up in a Jay-Z music video.
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2008: The 62 S Laundalet Drops the Top
Image Credit: Maybach The next few years saw a slow but steady stream of 57s and 62s flow into the world’s toniest neighborhoods, but apart from a few small tweaks like a larger, more powerful engine and a gentle facelift, the cars remained largely unchanged. At least, until 2008, when Daimler AG (as it was now known, having shed Chrysler) brought back the long-lost body style of the laundalet. The Maybach 62 S Laundalet looked like any other Maybach from the B-pillar forward; behind that, though, the roof over the rear compartment had been replaced with a slicing power soft top that rose and fell between the roof rails. 22 were made in total, including one for the aforementioned rapper Birdman.
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2012: The Dream Fades Away
Image Credit: picture alliance Neither special editions nor the impressive hip-hop fame the brand had accumulated since its 2002 return were enough to keep the brand afloat, however. By the end of 2011, the brand had sold only around 3,000 units globally since 2002 — with Daimler losing around €330,000 on each one, according to one media estimate at the time. (Just 44 Maybachs had been sold in the U.S. from January through October of that year, according to one report.) As such, Daimler announced in late 2011 that the following year would be the brand’s last; the final Maybach rolled off the line on December 17, 2012.
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2014: Returning as a Sub-Brand
Image Credit: Roberto Machado Noa But while Maybach as a standalone marque may have been done, Daimler wasn’t through with the badge entirely. Instead, come 2014, the company brought it back once more — but this time as a sub-brand of Mercedes-Benz. The new Mercedes-Maybach models would be analogous to the Mercedes-AMG ones, but instead of offering additional performance versus the standard Benzes, the Maybach trims would pack even more luxury and emphasize comfort.
The first of the sub-brand’s vehicles to arrive was a Mercedes-Maybach version of the S-Class, its wheelbase stretched out 7.9 inches over the regular long-wheelbase version of the W222-generation S and comes outfitted with a choice of turbocharged V-8 or V-12 engines. The design was much more restrained versus the Maybach 57 and 62, but there was no shortage of luxury; reclining seats, of course, remained on the menu.
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2017: Maybach takes on the G-Wagen
If the first Mercedes-Maybach vehicle was relatively restrained, the second to arrive under the new sub-brand was anything but. The Mercedes-Maybach G 650 Laundalet took the iconic Gelandewagen — the boxy off-road beast that became a status symbol par excellence — and turned it into a wild statement of excess. As with the 62 S Laundalet, the rear passenger compartment was outfitted with a retractable soft top; the G’s chassis was also stretched to provide room for a pair of reclining thrones and a partition between the front and rear. A twin-turbo AMG-sourced V-12 delivered the power, while the G 500 4×4² provided the monster truck-like ground clearance courtesy of portal axles. Only 99 were made for the world, at a price of €749,700 (including taxes in Germany).
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2019: Maybach’s ‘Mainstream’ SUVs
Image Credit: Gerlach Delissen – Corbis Obviously, the G-Class Laundalet wasn’t meant for widespread consumption, even by the limited definition of the term used by an ultra-luxury brand. But buyers love SUVs — and with Rolls-Royce rolling out the Cullinan and Bentley bringing forth the Bentayga, Mercedes-Maybach needed a more mainstream one of its own. Enter the GLS 600, which debuted in November 2019 and gives the GLS-Class SUV a similar treatment to the one the S-Class receives in Mercedes-Maybach form. it did without the S-Class’s wheelbase extension, as the GLS-Class was already capacious enough to accommodate a reclining second row of captain’s chairs.
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2023: Maybach Goes Electric
Image Credit: Sean Gallup In 2021, Mercedes-Benz announced plans to go all-electric by the end of the decade, and that meant Mercedes-Maybach needed to start moving over to battery power, too. The first model to do so was the EQS 680 SUV, a super-lux version of the Mercedes-Benz EQS SUV that had rolled out the year before — which, in turn, was largely based on the EQS sedan. The company’s all-EV plans have since been walked back in the face of a changing marketplace, but the Maybach EQS SUV has already begun showing up on the streets, offering the same levels of opulence and comfort as its gas-powered siblings — just without any emissions.
